White Oleander

"The secret is — a magician doesn't buy magic. Admire the skill of a fellow magician, but never fall under his spell." She rose and collected our glasses. And I thought of how Barry seduced my mother, his smoked mirrors and hidden trained doves. She never chose him, not really, but she gave him everything. She would always be his, even if he was dead. He had shaped her destiny.

 

"So what about love?" I asked.

 

She had started toward the kitchen but stopped, turned back, glasses in her hands. "What about it?" When Olivia frowned, two vertical lines sliced between her eyebrows and cut into her rounded forehead.

 

I flushed red, but I wanted to know. If only I could ask without falling all over myself like a clown in size fourteen shoes. "Don't you believe in it?"

 

"I don't believe in it the way people believe in God or the tooth fairy. It's more like the National Enquirer. A big headline and a very dull story."

 

I followed her into the kitchen, exactly like ours yet light-years away, a parallel universe. Her pots and pans dangled overhead from a restaurant rack — copper pots, iron. Ours were Corning Ware with the little blue flowers. I ran my hands over Olivia's terra-cotta counters, inset with painted ceramics, where ours were mottled green and white, like a bad cold.

 

"So what do you believe in?" I asked her.

 

Her dark gaze ran with pleasure along the warm cinnamon tile, the beaten copper hood over the range. "I believe in living as I like. I see a Stickley lamp, a cashmere sweater, and I know I can have it. I own two houses besides this. When the ashtrays are full in my car, I'll sell it."

 

I laughed, imagining her bringing it back to the dealer, explaining why she was selling. She probably would. I could hardly fathom someone living so close to her own desire.

 

"I just spent three weeks in Tuscany. I saw the Palio in Siena," she said, strumming the words like the strings of a guitar. "It's a fifteenth-century horse race through the cobbled streets. Would I exchange that for a husband and kids and happily-ever-after? Not to mention the likely outcome, divorce and overtime at the bank and shaky child support. Let me show you something."

 

She picked up the small quilted bag on her counter, found her wallet, opened it for me to see the wad of cash as thick as my finger. She spread the bills, at least a dozen hundreds among the others. "Love's an illusion. It's a dream you wake up from with an enormous hangover and net credit debt. I'd rather have cash." She put her money away, zipped her purse.

 

Then she put her arm around my shoulder and led me to the door. The amber light fell through the bubble glass against our cheeks. She hugged me lightly. I smelled Ma Griffe, it was warmer on her. "Come again, anytime. I don't know many women. I'd like to know you."

 

I left walking backwards so I wouldn't miss a moment of her. I hated the idea of going back to Marvel's, so I walked around the block, feeling Olivia's arms around me, my nose full of perfume and the smell of her skin, my head swirling with what I had seen and heard in the house so much like ours, and yet not at all. And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.

 

12

 

I LAY ON MY BED, wondering what I would be like when I was a woman. I'd never thought much about it before, my possible futures. I'd been too busy sucking fish juice, burying myself in the sand against the killing rays of desert sun. But now I was intrigued by this future Astrid that Olivia had seen in me. I saw myself sort of like Catherine Deneuve, pale and stoic, the way she was in Belle dejour. Or maybe Dietrich, Shanghai Express, all shimmer and smoke. Would I be fascinating, the star of my own magic theater? What would I do with a wad of hundred-dollar bills?

 

I imagined that money in my hand. My mind went blank. So far, my fantasies had centered completely on survival. Luxury had been beyond imagining, let alone beauty. I let my eyes rest on the striped curtains, until the stripes themselves formed a sculptural shape. Ray had seen it in me. With Olivia's help, I could own it, create it, use it. I could work in beauty as an artist worked in paint or language.

 

I would have three lovers, I decided. An older man, distinguished, with silver hair and a gray suit, who would take me traveling with him, for company on long first-class flights to Europe, and stuffy cocktail receptions for visiting dignitaries. I called him the Swedish ambassador. Yes, Mother, I would lie down for the father, gladly.